A Certain Latitude (31 page)

Ceres put her hand on Allen’s wrist. “You too hot. You got de fever.”

“No, I’m well enough.” Allen sat, drew a fresh piece of paper toward him, sharpened a pen, and wrote out two manumissions, the official document required for freeing a slave. First his mother’s and then his own. His hand shook as he wrote; how many other slaves had been privileged to write their own manumission?

…
hereby giving, granting, and releasing unto him, Allen Jonathan Robert Pendale, all right, title, dominion, sovereignty, and property, which, as lord and master over the aforesaid Allen Jonathan Robert Pendale, I have had, or which I now have, or by any means whatsoever I may or can hereafter possibly have over him, the aforesaid Negro, forever
.

March signed, with Finch as witness, and it was done.

Allen stood, a free man once more, as the library rocked around him so, he thought for a moment he was aboard a ship, the pen rolling from his fingers and leaving a trail of ink on the table.

He read the document again, his eyes dwelling on the words
forever
. An eternity, a void, like the one whose edge he tottered on, sick and dizzy. He was free to fall, to let go, away from the sudden clamor of voices and the clatter of a chair tipped onto the floor.

“I really don’t think your visit is a good idea, Mrs. Lemarchand,” the Earl of Frensham said. “He’s been ill for a week and his fever has only just broken.”

“Sir,” she said, “I understand that you feel you have nearly lost your son, not once but twice with this illness. I beg of you, have pity on me. I am like to lose my own husband, and—” She couldn’t continue.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Lemarchand.” He stood and opened the drawing room door. “May I suggest you leave my son alone?”

“I know you leave for England soon—”

“As soon as the cargo is loaded, yes, ma’am. I trust this is not a ploy to appeal to my better nature and take passage with us, for I must tell you that I shall not have that man on my ship—”

“Good day to you.” Clarissa walked past the earl as though leaving his house in indignation, but once out of the room, dashed for the staircase. She did not bother to argue March’s innocence in the matter. As far as the earl was concerned, March employed Blight and it was Blight who had imprisoned Allen. It made little difference to the earl, who gave the orders or who made the decisions. Blight had been turned off the estate, to fend for himself. No plantation owner on the island would hire him now.

By a stroke of luck, she found Allen’s bedchamber quite easily. Ceres sat at the bedside, knitting, while Allen slept, a writing slope and papers beside him on the bed, as though exhaustion had overtaken him mid-sentence. Allen’s mother looked at Clarissa with deep distrust. “Dis no place for you, Mrs. Lemarchand.”

“I—I had to see him. To explain…”

She walked over to the bed and gazed down at Allen. The strong, sturdy man she knew now had a fragility that shocked her. Was he fading away like March was?

“’Im strong,” Ceres said. “’Im get better.” Her needles clicked.

Allen turned over, sat up, and scratched his head. He blinked at Clarissa, rubbing his face, and gathered together his abandoned papers. “What are you doing here, Mrs. Lemarchand?”

“Don’t call me that.”

Ceres finished a row of her knitting and left the room.

Clarissa couldn’t look at him. She twisted her hands together. “I came to tell you how sorry I am. About everything. I should have—”

His hand clasped hers. She stared at his hand, at the healing cuts and fading bruises, on his skin.

“Stop. What’s done is done.”

“I know you must feel—”

“You know nothing!” He released her hand. “Don’t dare to presume to tell me of how I feel or must think. You cannot know, and I hope you never do, what it is like to find your whole life, the person you thought yourself to be, is a lie.”

“I’m sorry.” She kept her head lowered so he did not see the tears in her eyes. “I suppose there is nothing more to be said.”

“You have my thanks, Clarissa, for rescuing me.” He took up his pen and removed the lid of the ink bottle. “You’d best go,” he said a little more gently. “Mrs. Silcombe can be quite forceful.”

“Mrs. Silcombe?”

“Ceres. She took the name of my property, Silcombe Grange.”

“I see.” She summoned a smile. “I wish you well, Allen.”

“And I you.” He bent his head over his writing slope, effectively dismissing her.

Two weeks later Allen, his father, and Mrs. Silcombe boarded the Earl of Frensham’s ship, the
Persephone,
with its hold full of sugar. Allen had heard nothing further from March or Clarissa; as far as he knew, March still lived, but had not yet left for England. He gazed back at the shore of the island where his life had changed forever, watching the gentle sway of the palm trees and the gleam of the white sands. His hand crept into his pocket where his manumission lay: Allen Pendale, freedman.

“How are you feeling, Allen? We’ll sail with the evening tide, in a couple of hours,” his father said.

“I’m quite well, sir.”
And I know when the tide is.
He was becoming tired of his father’s solicitude, of being treated like a child, and then felt guilty about his irritation.

His mother came to his side and they stood together in silence. Allen had insisted on the married form of address as a courtesy—slaves did not marry. She had mentioned, with her usual stoicism, four other children she had lost as babies, to Allen’s dismay and sadness. She volunteered no information on who had fathered them.

“Look.” She pointed to a smudge of smoke inland that blossomed into a dark column. “Lemarchand’s boiling house.”

Others joined them at the rail, talking excitedly of the conflagration, the damage that would be caused by such a catastrophic fire. As they watched, another column of smoke arose.

“By God, the slaves must have done it!” Frensham trained a telescope on the shore.

“A slave uprising?” Allen asked.

Frensham lowered the telescope. “Oh, yes. It happens from time to time, and God knows we all warned March of keeping such vermin as Blight in his employ…well, I trust he and his daughter got out in time.”

Allen stared at the columns of smoke. What if March had not escaped? And what of Clarissa and Celia?

He turned to his father. “I must make sure they are safe.”

“Allen, I beg of you, don’t go!”

“I’ll do nothing rash.”

His father thumped one fist onto the rail. “You don’t need to do anything rash to be in danger. You don’t understand. The slaves will kill indiscriminately without reason or pity. They—”

“They’re like animals. Yes, I understand. Remember you talk to a man who carries his manumission in his pocket.” He walked away from his father and addressed the captain. “Sir, if you please, lower the longboat. I need to go ashore.”

“There’s not much time before the tide turns, sir,” the Captain said.

“Allen!” His father was almost in tears, and Allen could understand his fear that he was about to risk losing his son again.

“Let ’im go.” Mrs. Silcombe touched the earl’s sleeve. It was the first time Allen had seen either of them break the wary silence they maintained.

His father nodded.

“Good-bye, Papa.” He embraced his father, and then, for the first time, his mother, before swinging overboard on a loop of rope into the longboat.

Allen told the sailors who rowed him to the jetty to wait until the tide turned, and if he had not returned, they should leave. He walked up the beach through pristine white sand, hoping he’d be able to recognize the opening in the mangroves that led to March’s house. Yes, here it was—he recognized the fantastically bent and knobbled tree under which he’d loitered, watching March and Clarissa caress each other.

The air was moist and thick with insects intent on flying up his nose and into his mouth and eyes. He wished he had a cheroot to ward them off. He removed his coat, waistcoat, and neck-cloth, his shirt becoming drenched with sweat. The scent of burning, overlaid with the acrid stink of burning sugar, became stronger as he started up the slope to the house, making his way along the oyster shell path that wound through walls of hanging vines. He could hear voices now—yelling and shouting—and an insistent heavy thudding.

As Allen came to the edge of the wilderness, he heard the sound of a horse tearing at grass. A horse harnessed to a trap, presumably for the Lemarchands’ departure, had wandered onto the lawn and was contentedly grazing. So they must still be here. Allen captured the horse’s reins and tethered it to a nearby branch.

Something that looked like a crumpled heap of cloth lay a little way off. Still keeping in the shade of the tropical greenery, he moved to investigate. As he drew nearer, the buzzing flies and the heap of cloth became a human shape, and one he knew. Finch. Finch with his throat slashed, blood soaking into his clothes and into the green of the lawn, eyes staring blank at the sky.

A group of slaves, using a huge timber as a battering ram, attacked the front door of the house. Every window was shuttered and presumably bolted from inside.

He tossed his outer clothes into the trap and ran toward the house. He hoped that his initial impression, of a dark man in shirtsleeves, would be enough to make him blend in for as long as he needed, until they saw he was wearing shoes and heard him speak. Then, he’d have to rely on his own wits.

Allen got as far as the steps, before someone recognized him and let out an angry shout. A young boy—he could only have been about twelve—ran up to him, waving a machete, dark eyes wide with fear and excitement.

Allen stood still, hands spread to show he was unarmed, and then, as the lad didn’t stop, sidestepped, grasped his wrist, and disarmed him. He tossed the machete down and away, then ran to the top of the steps and turned to face the slaves. He’d seen riots before; he knew how a crowd could be swayed, or cowed, or enraged. He knew he could not stop them, nor could he condemn them.

This crowd, faced with a man they knew to be a white master, who was yet something else, slowed, muttering.

Allen looked down upon them, at men maddened beyond endurance, machetes glinting in the sunlight, and knew this might be the last thing he ever saw. Within seconds he could be dead meat like Finch, a butchered thing.

“I’m Allen Pendale,” he said in the relative silence, “and I have been abused as you have been, but only for a few days, not my entire life. You know my story. You know I’m lucky enough that I had family to help me and can go to England. I’ll offer safe passage to any of you who want to come with me and take your chances there. You’ll still have to work hard, but no one will own you. You can’t be a slave in England.

“I’m only one man, and although the white master in me wants to stop you from taking the house, I know I can’t. But leave Lemarchand and his family to me.”

There was some hesitation. One of the men—Allen recognized him as a groom in Lemarchand’s stable—held out a strangely shaped object to Allen. He took it with some hesitation before he realized it was a goatskin filled with sour beer, which he took and drank from, spilling some down his shirt.

Another man, whom Allen didn’t recognize, nodded. “You take de master, den.”

“And his wife and daughter,” Allen said.

They nodded and grinned at Allen.

Allen passed the goatskin to the boy he’d disarmed, stepped back, and let the assault on the front door continue.

The solid mahogany shuddered, splintered and caved in, and the slaves poured into the house. A large china vase that stood on a plinth in the entrance hall flew against the wall and smashed into pieces on the floor. Allen winced, thinking of china shards like glass under bare feet, but the men rampaged into the house in a wave of anger.

Let them. He couldn’t stop them. He glanced up the stairs and saw someone move on the landing—a whisk of skirts. “Clarissa!” He shouted. “Celia! It’s I, Allen.” He ran up the stairs, in the direction he’d seen the fleeing figure take.

“Stop!” Celia stood outside her father’s bedchamber, a pistol in her hands. She was shaking, but the muzzle of the pistol wavered up and down at his chest level. He had no doubt it was loaded.

“Put the pistol down, Miss Celia, if you please.” This was a far more troublesome situation than a wildly excited young lad with a machete.

“No! You’re one of them. I’ll shoot you.”

“I’m Allen Pendale. I’m the man who treads on your feet when we dance.”

“Stay away!”

“I can crack you Brazil nuts and keep the kernel whole, remember?” He walked toward her slowly, his voice calm and soothing, hoping she wouldn’t panic and pull the trigger. “Give me the pistol.”

“No,” Celia wailed, and burst into tears.

He gripped her wrist, pointed the pistol away from them both, and uncocked it. He took her in his arms. “You’re a brave girl. All is well.”

March’s bedchamber door opened, revealing Clarissa. Like Celia, she was dressed for travel in a bonnet and long cloak. “Where’s Finch? He went to fetch the trap. What’s happening? They’ve broken in, haven’t they?”

“They have indeed, and I expect they’ll set it afire soon when they’re finished looting,” Allen said. “Come with me and I’ll get you out of here. We must make haste. Fetch March.”

“Mr. Allen!” Nerissa ran toward them. “I want to come to England wid you.”

“Oh, thank God, they don’t all hate us,” Celia cried.

Nerissa looked at her with contempt. “I want to be free like ’im said downstairs, ’cause you a silly, spoiled girl, Miss Celia. I want to work and be paid.”

“Excellent,” Allen said. “You can start earning right now by helping me carry Mr. Lemarchand’s belongings outside.”

Allen pushed past Clarissa and into the bedchamber.

March, wearing a hat and greatcoat, stood at the window, watching the smoke swirl outside. “The roof of the boiling house has just fallen in,” he remarked. “The smithy and the dairy are both gone, too.”

“Your house is next, sir. We must leave, and Clarissa will not budge unless you do.”